Gender

Testosterone: Puts the lead in your pencil among other things...

mir — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 14:11:08 -0500

THIS AMERICAN LIFE PODCAST ::
220: Testosterone

Stories of people getting more testosterone and coming to regret it. And of people losing it and coming to appreciate life without it. The pros and cons of the hormone of desire.

Alright my little friends, listen and let me know what you think.

Take your penile surplus and put it where the sun don't shine

mir — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 11:07:14 -0400

Simon sent me this transcript to read and asked for my commentary. It's not by him, please be advised. He just wanted to know what I thought

Is There Anything Good About Men? by Roy F. Baumeister.

Just to give you a clue of what's in store for you should you decided to fight your way through the entire address:

That's an important first clue to how culture uses men. Culture has plenty of tradeoffs, in which it needs people to do dangerous or risky things, and so it offers big rewards to motivate people to take those risks. Most cultures have tended to use men for these high-risk, high-payoff slots much more than women. I shall propose there are important pragmatic reasons for this. The result is that some men reap big rewards while others have their lives ruined or even cut short. Most cultures shield their women from the risk and therefore also don't give them the big rewards. I'm not saying this is what cultures ought to do, morally, but cultures aren't moral beings. They do what they do for pragmatic reasons driven by competition against other systems and other groups.

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Female tech blogger gets death threats

mir — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 09:55:31 -0400

So this is a treat;

Usability specialist, tech writer and "female", Kathy Sierra had to withdraw from being a workshop chair at ETech when people started trolling her blog, uttering death threats and in fact started a whole new set of "meanblogs" just dedicated to posting hateful, humiliating or offensive material about notable people in the blogosphere.

Kathy was one of their targets and subject not just to rude material, but shockingly vulgar and violent material. What surprises me is the sophomoric hatred leveled at this woman, who is clearly only threatening to people because she is intelligent, successful and powerful.

What is this thing called a community??

mir — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:42:13 -0500

Okay.. it's time for a feminist rant.

Hugh who is dear to my heart in more ways than I can name and who got me the job I love has just done something that generally makes me see all shades of red.

What did poor Hugh (who has no idea I am taking the piss out of him as we speak) do?

He made a list of cool Montrealers doing stuff and 90% of the list-makers are dudes.

It seems so obvious, it oughtn't be a problem, but then if I truck on over to Julien's post about cool tech stuff happening in Mtl, I get the same feeling, 41 comments and not counting AJ (boy, girl you tell me?) there is but 1, not counting mine, from a lady.

Do chicks n'existe pas in the tech scene? I know some of our number (Maya MK, Sophie) did leave this fair isle for other islands where people eat sheep guts and ride tubes. But still...

Oh no I was tagged and I didn't notice!!

mir — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 20:05:27 -0500

I should really check my stats more often.

Trails and Tribulations conference

mir — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 22:59:57 -0500

I went to this conference over the week-end

Trials and tribulations of Internet Research

Favorite speakers included:

Negotiating Roles: Researching MMORPG’ s -Marinka Copier from the university of utrecht who studies WoW and teaches an entire masters course in-game. She was wicked, and had a really nice way of looking at her practice as wholistically tied to her work as an academic, and by practice here I am referring to her gaming. I am going to email her a bunch so I can apply to do a summer study program at UU. Add it to the list.

"A flattery which is not true praise"

mir — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:13:14 -0500

"we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambigious choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because - without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing was not what is called "feminine" - we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery which is not true praise."

Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronte)

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Wow I hate 2.0

mir — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:48:31 -0400

For the second day in a row complete strangers have skyped me, tried to chat with me and this time sent a little hug emoticon.

Sorry dudes, what kind of pervert needs to use a chat application to get their rocks off. Go do what normal perverts do: Hang out in a park touching your nuts, then I only have to acknowledge your existence when I am walking the dog. Leave me alone at home I am trying to finish my work.

I am also getting kinda paranoid that somewhere out there is the web2.0 equivalent of the public bathroom stall and some mean mean person has written; "For a good time skype..." and then my skype id. Which is not only incredibly unfriendly but also untrue - ask any of my friends, I am not really a good time. Manageable in short doses, but good is pushing it.

Wow, my Drupal Groups Query got 27 comments! + some random gender-talk

mir — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 12:00:23 -0400

I feel both popular and again, a little disingenious because I went on vacation and promptly forgot all about my little post.

Check it out though, I got all the lads at design talking about whether content or aesthetics is at the root of good design for the web.

CSS layouts and Drupal

While i am gossiping about Drupal threads...Removal of gender-specific pronouns from core

I had a rabbi once named Sharon who started a big movement to refer to all the gendered segments of our prayers using neutral or exclusive (...God of our fathers and mothers) terms. She got a holy shitstorm for trying that as well.